She pulls a packet of pills from her pocket and offers a cup with water. “Will she try to come back?”
He looks up at her. Maggie’s eyes are shadowed in the dark room, and she’s making a note on his chart, but he knows she’s not asking about Dot.
“Probably. Why wouldn’t you let her in?”
She sighs and straightens the blankets over his legs. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told her: Nothing good can come of this.”
“How did you know what she is?”
“How did you?”
“She told me,” he says. “But she didn’t have to tell you. You just knew.”
Maggie nods and meets his eyes. “She was killed just after I started here. I never knew her, but her face was plastered all over the news.” She pauses, studying him as her eyes fill with pain. “But that’s not what you’re asking, is it? Yes, I’ve seen her kind before around here.”
Colin swallows, but the question he wants to ask her isn’t forming quickly enough.
“Tell me,” Maggie says. “When she told you she was dead, did you decide it didn’t matter how strange she was, didn’t matter that when you kiss her she doesn’t feel like any other girl?” She leans closer, resting her hand on the side of the bed. “Did she feel like she was put back on this planet just for you?”
It feels too intimate, what she’s saying. It feels like she’s looking underneath his skin. And he hates the echo of her words: You’re going to break that boy’s heart. Or worse. He tugs the blankets up around his shoulders.
“Well.” Maggie sighs, picking up her clipboard and tucking it under her arm. “I’ve been in your shoes, Colin. That girl needs something, and nothin’s gonna stop her from taking it. You think about that.” She turns to leave, stopping in front of the door. “And maybe she was put here just for you. You’ll give and give until you hollow yourself out. But when that girl disappears without warning, without a trace, you ask yourself how long she can be gone before you break.”
The shift change at work is silent outside his door, and the only indication that time has passed is the appearance of an unfamiliar gray-haired nurse materializing at his side and recording his vitals.
She runs her hand along the IV tubing, checking for kinks. “I’m Linda. I do hospice in town, and came in to give Maggie a break. How’s your pain?”
“Better. Around a three.” Colin stretches, reaching to push the button at the side of the bed that helps him sit up.
“That your girlfriend in the hallway? The brunette? Tall as a tree, but skinny?”
Colin’s monitor picks up, and the nurse glances at it. Brunette. “Yes,” he says. “Can I see her?”
She smiles over the top of her clipboard. “I was told you were to rest.”
He stares at her, trying as hard as he can to silently communicate that she should let Lucy in. That he won’t tell anyone.
She starts to leave and then pauses at the door, looking back over her shoulder. “Thirty minutes.”
“Thirty,” he repeats in a burst. “I promise. Thank you.”
Pale yellow light bleeds into the room as she slips out, and he counts to eighty-three before the door opens again and Lucy steps in.
“Colin?” she whispers.
He scoots over to make room for her on the bed. “I’m awake.”
The air stirs as she moves next to him, and the mattress dips surprisingly under her added weight. They sit side by side, stiff and silent. Colin has no idea where to start asking about the world he saw, what he felt, whether any of it was real.
“Are you okay?” she asks finally.
“I think so. Are you?”
She nods. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“Was it real?”
She studies him, but doesn’t seem to need him to explain more. “I think so.”
Colin can feel his fingers grow clammy. It would be so much easier to explain if it happened only in his mind. “The world didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. It was bright, and . . . like there were more layers to everything. I know that doesn’t make sense, but I’d never seen color like that. And you . . .” He glances up to her quickly. “I felt you, Luce. I mean, we were the same.”
The memories fill his thoughts slowly, slithering in: icicles hanging from silvery branches, leaves greener than a December day has ever seen, a shimmering crystal-blue sky wrapping through it all. It’s a world worthy of a dream.
Her eyes darken, mocha swirling into burgundy. “What was it like to go in?” she asks hesitantly.
Only a few fragments before he fell in are clear. “I noticed a puddle of water on the ice right before it cracked,” he says. “But it was already too late. How is any of it possible, Lucy? Did I die?”
She reaches for his hand, and it surprises him how strong she feels. “I don’t know.”
She doesn’t say anything else, and he leans back, closing his eyes. Colin feels tired and sore, but mostly he feels like he does after a really long ride with a couple hard falls. The idea of falling in a frozen lake used to seem so extreme; it makes him wonder why he’s not in rougher shape.
They don’t talk about what it was like to finally feel each other for the first time. He doesn’t tell her about Maggie’s warning, and he doesn’t tell her that even when he realized what was happening, it never occurred to him to worry he might die.
He certainly doesn’t tell her how badly he wants to go back under.
CHAPTER 20 HER
COLIN IS HELD IN THE INFIRMARY THE NEXT day, and Lucy walks back through campus, feeling increasingly untethered with each passing step.